Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Le Pays des mégalithes

I don't know if I mentioned this
before, but when I arrived at my lycee I discovered that the previous
assistants who have lived in my room have accumulated and left behind
quite a few interesting and useful things, from the mismatched dishes
and cooking utensils to a random assortment of books to a collection
of partly-used bottles of dish soap and cleaning solution and the
French version of Febreze. (There's also a trio of unframed prints of
vegetables on the wall that I find very odd but can't justify taking down, seeing
as I don't have anything better to put up.) One of the more
intriguing and unexpected items lurking in my closet was a French
press.

I'd never used a French press, but I do
love coffee, and I was not about to go buy a drip coffeepot for the
time I'm here even if it meant subsisting on instant coffee for seven
months. (I actually don't mind instant coffee. My tastes aren't
refined enough, I guess. I mean, I can tell that it sucks compared to
“real” coffee, and given the choice I'll always pick something
better, but coffee has to be truly terrible for me not to want to
drink it, and even instant rarely falls that low on the scale.) I
finally got around to buying some ground coffee last week (sorry,
purists, but I'm far too lazy to grind my own even if I had a grinder
at hand) and finally got around to trying the press pot over the
weekend. And oh my God. Heavenly. Maybe it's only because all of the
coffee I'd had in the previous six weeks had been either instant
coffee in my room or espresso in cafes (because apparently ordering a coffee here always gets you espresso unless otherwise indicated), but I still think I may not
go back to drip coffee once I get home.

But back to my story: There is also a
Museum of Prehistory in Carnac that I wanted to visit while I was
there, but my bus choices for leaving the following morning were approximately seven or approximately
noon. Go France. The former was before dawn and would not allow me to make it to
the museum. The latter was after check-out time and would force me to
take my ridiculous backpack with me to the museum, and also would not
give me the time to do my other hike at Erdeven. I chose the early
bus, reasoning that the original intention had been for this to be
primarily a hiking trip, and that there are tons of museums on my
agenda for this year and missing that one wasn't the end of the
world. Even if it sounds awesome.

So after paying my hotel bill the night
before, because there wasn't going to be anyone at the front desk so
early in the morning, I got up at an ungodly hour for the second day
in a row and stood at the bus stop in the dark and the drizzle and
was the only person on the fifteen or twenty minute ride to Erdeven,
where I had to find my way through the deserted town and down a
surprisingly not deserted country road to the trailhead in the dark.
(It was pretty creepy, and one of the most anxiety-inducing things I've done since getting to France.) My route began at another set of alignments, which, like many
megaliths in Brittany, are just hanging out by the side of the road
like it's no big deal. There's a small parking lot for visitors and a
little signpost with some information, but that's it. And it's a lot,
compared to the vast number of sites that aren't acknowledged in any
way whatsoever. Anyway, I knew I'd reached the right spot when I saw
the stones rising up in front of me—big shadowy shapes slightly
darker than the dark around them. I initially thought they formed a
circle, which got me really excited (I love stone circles even more
than dolmens, I think, which is interesting given my attraction to
all things tomb-like), but once it was light enough for me to see
beyond the nearest ones I realized they were in rows like the ones at
Carnac. I need to read up on megaliths, because it seems that
alignments are the thing here in Brittany and circles are more of a
British/Irish phenomenon. I need to find out if that's true or if
I've just made it up based on my very limited experience.

Anyway, the prospect of being there at
dawn made the 6 o'clock alarm and the eerie, wet walk entirely worth
it. I sat on the fence and ate an apple and waited for there to be
enough light to start trying to take dramatic pictures. I started too
soon, of course, and took many a failed picture*, but it turned out
that dawn was anticlimactic anyway, because this is Brittany and day
did not break so much as slink up unnoticed. It very gradually became
light enough for me to see that it was going to continue to be a
dark, grey day, and I didn't actually see the sun until close to two
hours after it supposedly rose.

The trail away from the alignments led
into the woods, and there it stayed for most of the three-hour walk,
winding among dense trees and passing, meeting, or crossing an
assortment of other paths. I was very glad of my guidebook, and even
it wasn't entirely helpful—as well as being in French and using a
lot of words with which I was unfamiliar, it occasionally did not
give detailed enough directions, as when it failed to mention the
crossroads at which I ultimately took the wrong path, ruining the
loop and causing me to skip an entire leg of the hike so as not to
have to backtrack any more than was already necessary. That was
irritating. I like to think it got its just desserts when it fell
into a mucky puddle later on, though.

Anyway, my short[ened] walk in the
woods took me past an absurd number of megaliths, both more
alignments and some awesome dolmens. Some of them were signposted
(not informative signs, mind you, just names and arrows). Others were
not. None of them were fenced or roped off or otherwise protected in
any way. Anyone can walk among them, touch them, sit on them, crawl
inside the tombs. (I do not do those last two things, because I have
some respect, but I know some people do.) They're everywhere, and no
one cares. It blows my mind. I don't mean that as a criticism,
necessarily, just that I can't imagine ever thinking of freaking
megaliths as just part of the landscape, no more worthy of notice
than an oddly shaped tree or a hollow in the creek bank.

On a slightly different topic, I've
been pleased to discover that walkers/hikers in France smile and greet one
another in passing just as they do in America. That doesn't happen in
the cities. You ignore the other people on the sidewalk, who stare at
you with perplexed hostility if you try to make eye contact. But on
the trail, whether it's on the cliffs outside of Brest or deep in the
woods in rural Morbihan, people experience the same sense of friendly
camaraderie as on trails back home.

Or maybe hiking just appeals to a
certain kind of person. Maybe we all walk around town feeling awkward
about avoiding contact with the people around us.

It's a little ironic that you find
indifference when surrounded by people and warmth in the places you
go to get away.

* I have a love/hate relationship with
my camera, which is a Canon Powershot of whatever mid-range model was
current as of the summer of 2010. I love that it's small enough to
fit into a pocket, sturdy enough to tolerate being dropped now and
again (a necessary feature for almost all of my gadgets), and good
enough at what it does to take usually satisfactory and sometimes
excellent pictures without the assistance of any real photography
skills on my part. However, I hate my inability to manipulate it,
which is partly a result of same lack of photography skills and
partly due to its being a point-and-shoot. Obviously a
point-and-shoot is all that's necessary for someone without
photography skills, but it also simply cannot do some of the things a
better camera could do. One thing
in particular that it cannot do, that frustrates me endlessly because
it's a feature I actually would know how to use if we had it, is to
allow the shutter speed to be manually adjusted. I can adjust other
things I don't even understand, but I am not allowed to control the
shutter speed at all, and just that one simple thing would allow me
to make good on so many more of the dramatic photos I see in my
head...

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This started out as my international travel blog, and I used it to document (however incompletely and imperfectly) my month at an archaeological field school near San Ignacio, Belize, the four months I spent as a university student in Cork, Ireland, and my adventures living and working as an English language TA in Brest, France during the 2011-2012 school year. I've also posted occasionally between stints abroad, mostly about spiritual/metaphorical journeys or about plans and dreams for future travel. The goal now is to start blogging more regularly, about those things, my smaller-scale travels here in the U.S., and hopefully, someday, some more visits to other countries... So let's see how this goes.

The Enigmatic Twofold Explanation For The Blog Title:

Eldorado, by Edgar Allen Poe"El Dorado is also sometimes used as a metaphor to represent an ultimate prize or "Holy Grail" that one might spend one's life seeking. It could represent true love, heaven, happiness, or success. It is used sometimes as a figure of speech to represent something much sought after that may not even exist, or, at least, may not ever be found." — Wikipedia

About Me

I am 22 years old and a recent graduate of Oberlin College, where I probably learned more about gender, food, Judaism, and liberal politics than about anything I was formally studying. Things I did formally study include anthropology and history, but I also dream of writing novels and publishing my poetry... along with having a singing career, acting onstage, and/or becoming a respected designer of theatrical costumes. Oh well. Right now I'm killing time for a few years before applying to graduate school in archaeology.

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.